Unit information: Life and Death in the Ghettos and Camps: Social Histories of the Holocaust (Level I Special Field) in 2008/09

Unit name	Life and Death in the Ghettos and Camps: Social Histories of the Holocaust (Level I Special Field)
Unit code	HIST26017
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of History (Historical Studies)
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit aims at a social history of the Holocaust. Whilst we will look at those dubbed perpetrators and bystanders, our main focus will be on victims' experiences in wartime Europe, especially everyday life (and death) in the ghettos and camps. How much did Jewish men and women experience this event different? What about the young and old, religious and irreligious, rich and poor? Is it possible to write of anything approaching 'ordinary life' in the most extraordinary of places (the ghetto, the camp) and if so, what characterised it? What did people do, eat, think? What characterised the ghettos' Jewish leaders - the Jewish Councils - and 'resistance' in both the ghettos and camps? What kinds of sources provide answers to these questions and what are their limitations and possibilities? Diaries, memoirs and oral history accounts will provide much of the source material in this study, with a particular focus on the writings of diarists in the Warsaw ghetto and Primo Levi's post-war Holocaust memoirs. Although we will examine how and why the Nazis concentrated Jews in ghettos and camps, our focus will be less on perpetrator-driven political history, and much more on the experiences of ordinary Jewish victims.

Teaching Information

• 10 x 2 hour seminars

• 1 x 4000 word essay

Assessment Information

1 x 2 hour exam

Reading and References

• Elizabeth Baer & Myrna Goldenberg (eds.), Experience and Expression. Women, the

Nazis and the Holocaust (Detroit 2003)

• Gustavo Corni, Hitlers Ghettos. Voices from a Beleagured Society 1939-1944 (London 2002)

• Deb�rah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Holocaust. A History (London 2002)

• Michal Grynberg (ed.), Words to Outlive Us (London 2004)

• Primo Levi, If this is a Man (London 1987)

• Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York 1989)

• Abraham Lewin, A Cup of Tears (London 1990)

• Dalia Ofer & Lenore Weitzman (eds.), Women in the Holocaust (New Haven 1998)

• Eric Sterling (eds.), Life in the Ghettos during the Holocaust (Syracuse 2005)

• Dan Stone (ed.), Historiography of the Holocaust (Houndmills 2004)

• Nechama Tec, Resilence and Courage (New Haven 2003)

• Zo� Waxman, Writing the Holocaust (Oxford 2006)